Gadgetory

phones you know what I love about them I love how they fit perfectly in that handy little pocket in the front of my boxer shorts for storage the pleasing vibration sensation from incoming calls is more important than reproduction anyway and furthermore sorry not just a second - that's not a what that's not a pocket no there's not enough swinging there's not supposed to even be enough space in there to store a phone well maybe you just have a very small problem going on down there hey Corsair delivers real Necker nothing with their new strafe mechanical keyboard featuring genuine German made Cherry MX key switches click right here to learn more I don't really know where to start with the LG g4 so I guess I'll lead with a drop a like if you wanna see me take my electric unicycle review to the next level by adding aerial footage to the selfie stick footage we already have and I think that's all the stalling I can get away with here's the problem I usually sit down to script my review with two or even four pages of notes mostly complaints for a mobile device video point form today I have half a page which is actually a really good sign for the g4 which I've been using as my daily driver for a little over a week so let's kick off with specs and I'll start with the processor controversy the g4 is a $600 phone off contract so it has the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 CPU right-wrong while it's unclear whether the reason was one of cost reduction or one of thermal control LG has opted for a Snapdragon 808 which features the same for a 53 cores for lower power background tasks but two fewer high performance 857 cores something that in theory damages performance in heavily multi-threaded workloads but based on some fascinating testing done by Android Authority may actually not affect real-world results that much thanks to the 808 far lesser thermal throttling the rest of this phone is pretty standard fare though on paper at least Adreno 418 GPU 3 gigs of ddr3 L memory 32 gigs of internal storage Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the 5.5 inch IPS display active noise cancellation for phone calls a 16 megapixel rear and 8 megapixel selfie camera a 3000 milliamp hour battery with quick charge 2.0 allowing a 60 percent charge in about half an hour dual then daysy Wi-Fi and an FM tuner which I see I got you there the FM tuner is a little unusual these days actually but some folks will appreciate it specifically those with low cap date who don't want to use the microSD expansion slot to hold up to 128 gigs of extra music or anything else and yes that is another one under the removable backing which is available in plastic and leather options not to mention the of course debrand skinned one that we have on ours is the aforementioned SD slot contact points for optional qi wireless charging rear plates and ah that 3000 milliamp battery is removable something we used to take for granted on the Android side but that Samsung did away with on the Galaxy s6 and as we dig away under the skin of the g4 we can actually find some other things that make it more than just another g3 for starters while the g3 had a 1440p IPS display I criticized it at the time because there were phones with 1080p displays that smoked the g3 in spite of its extra resolution in important use case scenarios like standing outdoors thanks to their high contrast ratios not this time the g4 screen has gotten some serious upgrades including integrating the touch screen and LCD panel into a single layer for better color reproduction and utilizing quantum display technology not to be confused with quantum dot which requires a separate layer and thicker bezel to improve color reproduction with LG quoting 98% DCI coverage increase image brightness substantially and crank contrast to the point where I forgot sometimes that I wasn't using an AMOLED display all of this without affecting battery life and it looks really good I still don't think 1440p is necessary in a handheld but at least besides the extra strain on the GPU to power it in games and whatnot there is no drawback now so let's talk day-to-day use ergonomics of the phone or a strong point considering its size I generally have trouble if anything above five inches if you know what I mean but it seems like I'm not the only one out there who feels like whether it's by merit of its gently curved shape oh yeah I guess I forgot to mention that the screen is very subtly curved or the positioning of all of the physical buttons so up-down and lock on the rear of the phone it's somehow less on for me than most five and a half inch devices and we probably have to give LG's Optimus UX software layer some of the credit here though some stuff like double touching to wake which really does help with the size has been so well received that others have adopted it and while there's definitely more bloat than even Samsung's latest iteration of TouchWiz I didn't find any of it particularly objectionable and no particular order I liked the contextual information smart notice widget on the home screen by default it's visible enough to be convenient with whether upcoming birthdays contact suggestions and other updates but not so in-your-face that it's annoying the clipboard for copy pasting is awesome the accessibility options continue to be outstanding for LG dual window is handy for multitasking and little touches like smart settings lets you customize some behaviors like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on and off if you want but otherwise completely stay out of the way and you don't have to look at them at all and additionally most importantly I didn't notice any performance chugging which used to be my primary complaint about these skins so kudos for that and on the subject of kudos let's get into the best thing about the phone finally the camera check out this selfie I took yeah baby what a great get no sorry while the front-facing camera is actually good and that selfie aside from the stupid face I'm making is a pretty good one it's the rear camera that truly rocks here it's laser focus mechanism and built-in color spectrum sensor enable the GeForce 16 megapixel camera to consistently nail the most important things about cell phone camera pictures focus and white balance giving surprisingly great results in auto mode but throwing in RAW shooting and then surprisingly fine manual control for the shutter bugs out there as well and while I could criticize the camera apps slow startup time a double touching volume down to launch the camera is good and video recording it just took a picture and video recording is excellent as well the preview window is very fluid and doesn't resize when you switch modes and thanks to three axis image stabilization prising li easy to get rock-solid footage out of it with all the usual modes including Ultra HD at 30fps and slow-mo supported so the conclusion here is pretty simple the g4 does a lot of things right and did nothing to offend me the horrendous rear facing speaker notwithstanding unlike Samsung and Apple LG doesn't have their own flagship class mobile processor design so the g4 uses an off-the-shelf debatably not top-tier CPU but honestly I felt like phones have been fast enough for a while now and it never felt like an issue to me the whole time I was using the device so congrats LG the g4 wins a recommendation for me as long as its buyers are willing to accept the relatively plasticky build quality that comes with the flexibility of a replaceable battery and on the subject of the replaceable battery some of you are probably wondering what exactly that sexy carbon-fiber skin that I have on the back of the phone in all of our b-roll is that my friends is a precision cut skin from D brand skins there are buds over there and men do they ever do a great job of these things you know the funny thing about it is is my first D brand spot that I ever did I was talking about how precisely they managed to get the fit so that it really did look like a piece of the phone and remarkably they have actually managed to improve it quite a bit since then as you guys probably noticed in the b-roll you can not see the seam in spite of the fact that that vinyl wrap actually doesn't even go around the edge of the backplate it stops right at the edge of it you just cannot find the seam once you put the phone together so if you guys are interested in checking out some of the cool stuff they do whether it's for phones tablets they even do laptops game consoles game controllers head over to the link in the video description so check out D brand calm and yeah pick it up they're actually very reasonably priced and they're a Canadian company so of course we love our Canadian Canadian bros actually didn't realize they were Canadian until sometime into the relationship and I was like oh no way they're in Toronto and it was awkward because I was into toe and he's like hey why didn't you visit us missiles like yeah so there you go so I guess that's pretty much it guys if you dislike the video BAM I think you know what to do but if you liked it then go ahead and slam that like button down below or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through the community forum now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out scrapyard wars 2 which is finally finished all five parts are up including the stunning conclusion where we discover who wins lioness or Luke a lot of you have probably watched it already but if you haven't do definitely check it out